Fun_People Archive
12 Jul
Culture smorgasbord

Date: Tue, 12 Jul 94 13:09:11 PDT
To: Fun_People
Subject: Culture smorgasbord

Forwarded-by: elshaw@MIT.EDU (Libby Shaw)
From: Perspective, Harvard-Radcliffe's Liberal Monthly, Summer 1994,
	Volume XI, Number 5

"The Daily Record reports that a woman in Prague, believing that her husband
had betrayed her, jumped from her third-story window and landed on him as
he passed below, killing him instantly.  She recovered."
--In These Times, May 17, 1993


"This envelope was not printed on recycled paper."
--From a DIRECT MAILING promoting Rush Limbaugh's newsletter,
[reported in] The Boston Globe, February 26, 1994.


"Before a lethal injection, the condemned person's arm is swabbed with
alcohol to prevent infection."
--Utne Reader, quoted in The Progressive, February 1994.


"One legislator started wearing a bullet-proof vest, and a group that
supports guns has started warning its members that they cannot educate
lawmakers if they keep threatening them with late-night phone calls.  'You
just make them more sure that they want you disarmed,' the group, Firearms
Coalition of Colorado, advised its members."
--The New York Times, February 13, 1994.


"The problem with AIDS is:  you get it, you die.  So why are we spending
money on the issue?"
--Montana Lt. Governor Dennis Rehberg discussing state budget cuts for
hospitals.  Newsweek, January 17, 1994.


"We're not discriminatory type.  The town may have rejected the gay rights
ordinance, but then we turn around and elect a colored person.  We can't be
prejudiced."
--Richard Perron, resident of a New England town which elected its first 
African American mayor.  Newsweek, February 14, 1994.


"They're failures.  Well, that's a little strong.  But if $120,000 a year
is the best job you've ever had, you haven't really done much."
--Tom Clancy, speaking about members of Congress, quoted in The Virginia 
Pilot and the Ledger Star, July 13, 1993.


My second law--"Never order decaffeinated espresso in a multicultural
society"--has prompted others.  The best so far is from Elliott Abrams:
"Never eat fish in a country with an unsafe national airline."
--John O'Sullivan, "From the Editor," National Review, November 29, 1993.

© 1994 Peter Langston